By Ray Bennett
There are not many good movies about making movies because the moviemakers tend to take everything far too seriously and forget that it’s only a movie. It’s all the more pleasing then that journeyman director Michael Schroeder (“Cyborg 2,” “Cyborg 3”) has come up with a small gem about making pictures titled “Man in the Chair.”
It’s far-fetched and sentimental, but it has a savvy sense of the industry and enormous charm. Christopher Plummer is terrific as a cranky old retired gaffer who helps a likeable and ambitious movie-struck kid (Michael Angarano) make a student film. M. Emmet Walsh as a washed-up screenwriter and Robert Wagner as a wealthy producer are also in good form.
The movie won the American Spirit Award, given to a unique indie feature made outside mainstream Hollywood, at the 22nd annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival, in February. It also screened in the Generation14 Plus section at the Berlinale.
Upcoming dates in the United States include the AFI Dallas International Film Festival (March 30, 31) and the Method Fest Independent Film Festival in Calabasas CA on March 31, as part of a Plummer tribute, and April 3. There’s no release yet planned for the United Kingdom but I saw it at a screening in London and reviewed it for The Hollywood Reporter. Here’s how it begins:
LONDON – There’s a lot of wishful thinking in Michael Schroeder’s “Man in the Chair,” a ramshackle but likeable story of a movie-mad L.A. kid who gets a bunch of old-timers from the motion picture retirement home to help him make a student film.
The serious topic of neglect of the aged is given a moving examination but the picture is really about wish fulfillment as a neighborhood Valley youngster competes with a well-off rival to see who can make the best short film in a school competition.
The structure is conventional but movie buffs will enjoy all the film references and the strong sense of being among industry insiders. Committed performances by a good cast topped by Christopher Plummer, M. Emmet Walsh and Robert Wagner will help the film thrive at festivals and art houses. It should also do well on DVD.
Plummer has a fine time as a cantankerous retired gaffer named Madden who we see in a flashback being given the nickname Flash by Orson Welles on the set of “Citizen Kane.” He’s a spry old guy living comfortably in a well-appointed industry nursing home, having belonged to a good union, as he points out.
FILM REVIEW: Zack Snyder’s ‘300’
By Ray Bennett
Federico Fellini famously made his glorious films with no sound and added voices and Foley in post-production. In his new comic-book film “300,” director Zack Snyder apparently has shot only the actors and added everything else in post.
The result is a cold and sterile piece of work that resembles a series of those glossy painted plates that are sold on TV as keepsakes except these show people with spears and arrows sticking out of them and bits missing, such as heads.
Because it’s so completely artificial, the violence is not repulsive as it is in Martin Scorcese’s grubby little gangster picture “The Departed,” nor is it visceral as in Mel Gibson’s thrilling chase film “Apocalypto.” And it’s not scary at all. It’s just silly.
Teenaged boys obviously flocked en masse to see “300” when it opened in the U.S. on the weekend but watching it on London’s vast IMAX screen tonight suggested it’s not something for grownups.
There’s nothing a computer graphics person can do to fill a frame the way nature does and the clumsy swathes of sea, mountains and battlefields look crude and lifeless compared to even oil paintings.
It’s all of a piece, however. The acting is as bad as the music. Gerard Butler (below left with Rodrigo Santoro as Xerxes) keeps screaming about being a Spartan but the angrier his King Leonidas gets, the more he sounds like a Glaswegian on a rowdy Saturday night. And when his soldiers chant their war cry in unison, they sound just like soccer hooligans on a tear. There are some truly ugly characters including one scarred, grunting giant (Robert Maillet as Uber Immortal, left) whose breath looks as blood curdling as his swirling blades.
It might be fun, perhaps, if it weren’t so boring. I was very pleased that I didn’t have to write a formal review of “300,” which Warner Bros. releases in the U.K. on March 23. The seats in the rafters at IMAX are very comfortable and perfect for a snooze.
One thing that’s not come up much in the film’s publicity is that with all those near-naked male bodies bonding in battle and death, “300” is also quite camp, as The Hollywood Reporter’s Gregg Kilday points out in THR’s Risky Biz blog:
“It probably passed over the heads of many of the fan boys, but before you could say “Don’t ask, don’t tell the Spartans,” a debate began percolating up all over the web over just how gay “300” is … now that the movie’s open, a lot of gay reaction has been positively ecstatic.”